Murder(s) on the Orient Express

I though 2nd guy from the left was Depp for a moment there.

the MAD Magazine spoof of the Lumet movie is my fave thing about this whole property

i have a hard time envisioning this kinda thing producing anything but laughter today

I'm more than a little surprised that Jacobi wasn't in the 1974 version.

Haha you're right at that.

I mean, the whole point is how well the scenery is chewed (Ingrid Bergman got her Oscar via her version of it), but seeing as how it was Lumet directed Finney just so there was a logical check. I can't imagine Branagh doing anything but telling himself to give in to his worse impulses and everyone else will react accordingly.

The Lumet film is awful, just awful. And long.

Bergman's worst performance too. Man, did PBS love airing it in the late 80s

I like the new tarantula-face Poirot. Thought it was Michael Gambon behind the spider CGI though.

xpost I recently rewatched it and immediately noticed how her interrogation scene was done as one take, no cuts; Lumet talked about that a bit in the documentary with it. Kept thinking to myself "They gave her the Oscar just because of that, didn't they." (Plus the usual later-in-life gotta-honor-em-somehow folderol.)

That fact makes Lumet look worse! It's one of those hide-under-the-bed performances.

IIRC he said she talked him into it so there ya go.

Ingrid Bergman's Oscar was her second, and she spent a good chunk of her speech apologizing for winning.

Still, the movie has some old-pro shine to it (from what i can remember), like Richard Widmark's snorting gravitas as the baddie/victim. I saw it at 12 in a theater full of noisy teens (obv bored) who were upsetting the adults.

Hollywood felt so bad about punishing Ingrid for having a love child it was worth two AAs 18 years apart

he MAD Magazine spoof of the Lumet movie is my fave thing about this whole property

Yes! I remember it spoilerising the ending for me, so I've never actually risked the movie. Doesn't pretty much everyone know whodunnit?

also the plot is obv spun off the Lindbergh kidnapping case, which i think was somewhat common knowledge even among kids as late as '74.

It was Bergman's third.

the only thing worse than the lumet movie, which is just miserable, is the book. the orient express sitting in the snow, a grandiose locked room. what a waste. what a scam. there's a graham greene potboiler that's better. there's a 1997 graphical adventure game that's much better. if the branagh movie is as campy and trifling as that picture makes it look i'm glad they've finally gotten it right.

don't hate christie or anything but this is a low point inexplicably remembered as a peak.

Jesus, Agatha Christie was still alive and went to the royal command premiere:

https://long70s.tumblr.com/post/101362856292/murder-on-the-orient-express-sidney-lumets

Kael didn't hate it quite as much as I'd thought:

This all-star version of an Agatha Christie antiquity promises to be a sumptuous spread, and so it is, but not as tasty as one had hoped. When the train stops--it's snowbound throughout the murder investigation--the picture loses its impetus. Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Roberts, and Ingrid Bergman are standouts .... The percussively edited pre-title montage is by that wizard of film shorthand, Richard Williams; the film proper, shot by Geoffrey Unsworth, reaches its visual peak in the railway station, at the opening.

But yeah, Branagh is totally qualified to make a completely gratuitous genre movie.

There's at least two other versions I know of -- a 2001 TV movie with Alfred Molina as Poirot in a modern setting (I have my doubts) and, kinda intriguingly, a Japanese version, also for TV, done in 2015, but set in 1933 Japan and featuring only Japanese characters.

Peter Ustinov too surely?

... apparently not, narrow escape there.

huh, totally forgot Bergman had been Oscared for Gaslight in her prime. Three of her least interesting roles...

The b.o. success of MotOE led to the Ustinov-Poirot movies, which i've never made it through.

But David Suchet did one too. You might not have seen David Suchet as Poirot over there.

the suchet ones were on A&E here in america. i loved them as a kid and felt very sophisticated when i recognized him in the film adaptation of wing commander.

idk maybe it wasn't a&e maybe it was pbs mystery. maybe it was both.

I am not expecting Kenneth Branagh to be as good as David Suchet. To put it mildly.

suchet has the best hercu-tache

Depp has the Widmark role... gimme a break.

xp yeah it's utterly precise.

I remember enjoying well enough the Ustinov Evil Under the Sun on TV many many years ago. Looking at the Wiki for it now, screenplay co-written by Anthony Shaffer, directed by Guy (Goldfinger) Hamilton, a pretty cool supporting cast - Jane Birkin, James Mason, Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg etc.

Gaslight's one of her best.

I saw Death on the Nile a few years ago, much better. Angela Lansbury a standout as a rich airhead.

Christie was like Simenon or Stephen King in being so prolific it's hard to keep track of which of her novels are better than the others. I think Orient Express is overrated for its stunt plotting, somewhat like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ... once the final twist is revealed, there's not much air left in the souffle.

I wonder how Branagh will try to re-twist the ending; it's hard to imagine he'd keep the same reveal as the Lumet version.

My favorite Christie is And Then There Were None, which more or less invents its own genre. I don't think any of its film versions are as vicious or funny as the book.

I remember enjoying well enough the Ustinov Evil Under the Sun on TV many many years ago. Looking at the Wiki for it now, screenplay co-written by Anthony Shaffer, directed by Guy (Goldfinger) Hamilton, a pretty cool supporting cast - Jane Birkin, James Mason, Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg etc.

My favorite as well, even more of an overt trifle than the '74 film. Ustinov as Nero Wolfe as Poirot may not have been the real thing but it worked, and exchanging snow for sun and keeping the ensemble formula going was a good move. The occasional movies after that, less so.

But Alfred's right that Death on the Nile is sharp in its own right, and enough of a success as the follow-on to the 74 Murder to justify more of them. Pretty much all the films are 'rich Brits and other wastrels wander either the Empire or other settings and soon one of them dies' and at their best are perfect excuses for then-contemporary and now period costumes.

xpost best film versions of And Then There Were None are the giallo knock-offs, especially Bava's Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve).

I keep going back to that picture and laughing at Branagh's facial hair

This doesn't help matters:

https://ewedit.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/000253779hr.jpg?w=669

(Not least because the look in combination with the train suggests his character from Wild Wild West is en route to meet the Hateful Eight.)

looks like a professor in a tintin book: one of the victims in the seven crystal balls, maybe

belgians and their beards

I mean, did they CGI the goatee?

Branagh has been a dreadful actor and director outside his Shakespeare adaptaions, and I post an asterix on Much Ado About Nothing.

http://moserm.free.fr/moulinsart/images/cantonneau4.jpg

(actually from the shooting star)

thor >>> all his shakespeares

best film versions of And Then There Were None are the giallo knock-offs, especially Bava's Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve)

OTM

Bay of Blood is much better than most giallos, though I don't know if it lives up to a title as outstanding as Twitch of the Death Nerve.

Branagh's Olivier impression in that Marilyn movie was amusing, but on a variety-show level.

the only version I recognise:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51lNAQpDJkL.jpg

Hell, Depp as Mortdecai had a better mustache than Branagh here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq4m3yAoW8E

lmao

IT'S OFFICIAL

Whatever else happens, the person who did the music editing for this needs to never do that job again. Ever.

I know, right? This is going to be hilarious. Its only lasting value will have been Josh Gad trolling Daisy Ridley over Star Wars spoilers.

I... liked this? Maybe I was just in the right mood to settle into a pleasantly old-fashioned sort of film at 11 am. Found myself oddly affected by all the flashbacks and I found all the stars quite pleasant onscreen, even Depp. Ending maybe a LITTLE oversold but still cool imo.

I kept meaning to revive this thread when it was released -- did anyone else actually see it besides DC?

Me

Reviving because I suppose Branagh made it a franchise at this point. I did finally see this and Death on the Nile and both were too...what is the word, stately/glossy perhaps? I generally take or leave CGI use but too much of them both always felt artificial, and both lack the elan of the 70s versions; if both iterations are 'cram a bunch of celebs someplace for a whodunnit and let the costumes do a lot of the work,' the earlier ones just feel a bit more lived in, though Branagh's Nile had its moments.

Which is kinda why I was a little pleasantly surprised by the new one (had a free afternoon yesterday and Alamo Movie Pass, so). Per the trailers A Haunting In Venice aka his adaptation of Hallowe'en Party really is much more of a modern horror movie vibe in style and editing, though it isn't actually a horror film as such, and I have to thank him for not just marching on and doing his own Evil Under the Sun (especially since that movie is one of my utter untrammelled delights as noted upthread). Everything feels different all around; supposedly this was done on a smaller budget and I don't blame them, but it makes the most of general setting as well as the fact that it's mostly in an isolated mansion over the course of a single night, essentially a bottle episode on film. It's still not GREAT by any stretch, and there's no way that Branagh/Tina Fey matches Suchet/Wanamaker in their version, but there were some honestly sharp moments and even a legit funny laugh line or two. Aside from those two actors and Yeoh I literally didn't recognize a single person otherwise in the cast though checking after the fact explains a lot (namely that I've not seen almost any of the shows/movies that they've been in otherwise).

Bizarre-as-fuck detail that I guess Branagh wants to have as a signifying bit: there always has to be at least one moment of him trying to find or enjoying his two symmetrical eggs in the morning. I feel weird even typing that.

Huh! I found the first one to be a surprisingly pleasant Sunday-afternoon movie, and the second to be kind of an irritating failure to nail that vibe. Wasn't planning to go back a third time, but maybe I'll roll the dice.

I mean, we're talking matinee showing here, don't rush out! But better to see this before Halloween than after, I figure. (I do wonder why they aimed for mid-September instead of the start of October.)